


here ghost nothing

by sashawire



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Canon Compliant, Gen, Monster of the Week, Slammed into a Wall, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29697480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashawire/pseuds/sashawire
Summary: Danny bolts upright, hacking up a particularly palatable chunk of green mush. The Honda blares its horn and flashes its headlights once, twice. If Danny wasn’t so busy braying like an asthmatic donkey, he’d comment that this whole thing seems like it might end up with a solid lawsuit between Ana-Honda and a man whose name rhymes with Kephen Sting.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065578
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	here ghost nothing

**Author's Note:**

> i'm experimenting with a different writing style, & after a month of barely touching my drafts, i pumped this out in one sitting. ended up as probably the goofiest bthb i'm gonna write. don't get me wrong, i absolutely DO beat the shit out of a fourteen year old, but there are goofs and gaffs along the way.
> 
> this was originally supposed to be for the prompt "internal bleeding" but the fight scene just went on and on and i really didn't feel like writing a whole hospital/etc scene as well.
> 
> **Content Warnings:** Serious injuries, being hit by a car, strangulation.

Here’s how it starts: A ghost who’s been cropping up semi-regularly recently—affectionately dubbed “Ana-Honda” by the public, attributed to his forked tongue, mottled profile and fondness for one startlingly ugly 1998 Civic—popped his bald little head into an Amity Park grocery store, sending apples and oranges alike tumbling to the floor.

In the uproar that followed, Sam (who happened to be skulking around the parking lot at the time, intimidating the employees while she waited for her mom to finish shopping) shot a text off to the Ghost Gang group-chat.

(Actually, at present, it’s called  _ Keeping Each Other Ghosted, _ but that’s just because Jazz bullied Tucker into giving her mod privileges again, despite how well that worked out in the past.)

Danny ducked out of family game night with extreme dismay—normally said sarcastically, but he was just about to watch his dad get slammed with four +2s in Boo-No  _ and _ he was down to his last three cards, so leaving really was a disappointment—and a half-baked excuse about Sam getting her fingers knotted into her knee-high boot laces again.

Fast-forward to now; Ana-Honda slams his foot to the accelerator, and his floating sixth-gen sedan goes careening in Danny’s direction. He drops like a rock not a moment too soon (but perhaps a moment too late, he’ll realize later, scrubbing car oil and tire dirt out of his cow-lick).

Ana-Honda brakes with an impressive screech, considering he’s mid-air and the tires don't actually have anything to squeal against, flinging open the door and charging him once again, fangs bared and arms raised. This time, Danny wipes himself intangible, tugging absentmindedly at the baby-hair at the nape of his neck.

“I swear, it’s on the tip of my tongue…”

“Insolent teenager!” Ana-Honda hisses, lunging to grab his boot and missing again. “Respect your elders and their modes of transport!”

“Hey—No, it was right there! I had it!” Danny huffs, planting a kick to the centre of the ghost’s forehead, sending Ana-Honda spinning head-over-heels backwards like an untethered astronaut learning Newton’s First Law the hard way. Danny aims an ecto-blast at him, but hitting a soda can as target practice in Tuck’s basement and hitting a ghost cartwheeling through mid-air are apparently separate skill-sets.

Unfortunately, at this point, something large and car-shaped slams into his back.

He’s pretty sure he blacks out for a second or two there. One moment, idly watching the ghost somersault, like a king would a jester. The next, spitting wet leaves out of his teeth thanks to having somehow ended up face-first in the cabbage stand. “Bleh.”

“Danny?  _ Danny-y.” _ Tuck’s voice buzzes through the fancy new earpiece he designed and insisted they all wear. He and Sam are hovering outside the store. Last Danny glimpsed them outside, they seem to have a train of shopping carts ready for launch should the situation call for it. “Man, are you okay?”

Danny bolts upright, hacking up a particularly palatable chunk of green mush. The Honda blares its horn and flashes its headlights once, twice. If Danny wasn’t so busy braying like an asthmatic donkey, he’d comment that this whole thing seems like it might end up with a solid lawsuit between Ana-Honda and a man whose name rhymes with Kephen Sting.

As it is, he inhales, then coughs a few more times for good measure. Wiping cabbage dribble off his chin, he finally chokes out;  _ “Ghostery!” _

Tucker goes, “Wha…?” then, distantly, “Sam, I think he hit his head again.”

But Danny’s not listening anymore, climbing out of the cabbage stand to stand on his own two legs and shake himself like a wet chicken. He snaps his fingers,  _ “That’s _ what I was trying to think of earlier! You’re turning this place into a  _ ghostery _ store.”

There’s a faint crackling through the earpiece, indicating Sam and Tuck still have their mics on, but are saying nothing.

Ana-Honda, who’d finally stopped rolling through the air to lie face-down on the linoleum, lifts his head and glares weakly. “Come over and finish me off, why don’t you,”

Danny shrugs, moon-walking over and snapping the thermos off his belt.

Later, after being confronted about the events to follow, Danny will defend his own obliviousness with two excuses; A. he’s pretty sure he had brain trauma and short term memory loss, and B. it’s not his fault that damn car is just so bland and forgettable.

Eerily similar to the antagonist of a 2002 high-school chick flick being absolutely obliterated by a yellow school bus, Danny doesn’t see the Honda’s lights until it’s too late. He’s slammed into the grocery store wall at full velocity, pinned between the car and the cold brick at his back.

There’s a fun sort of gravelly  _ pop _ from somewhere inside him that he  _ really  _ hopes isn’t a rib, followed by a stabbing pain in his chest, which kind of dashes those hopes.

The car pulls back, allowing Danny to peel himself out of his own ghost-shaped crater and land on all fours, spitting bile-like ectoplasm onto the greasy store floor. He wheezes, throat tightening until it’s about the size of a straw.

Pressure against his shoulder, and he looks up just in time to see Ana-Honda’s chin from a rather unflattering angle as the ghost shoves him with the heel of his boot. Danny lets himself sprawl backwards, abdomen throbbing.

Ana-Honda looms, raising one hand above his head. Oh, jeez, those are spiked knuckles.

But instead of bringing his pointy fists down onto Danny with all the divine fury of an angel—or a Nasty Burger patron who’s just found out they can no longer serve the Double Gherkin Triple Mustard Bestial Extreme due to ongoing court cases—he crouches down.

Danny tries edging back a bit, but he hits the wall with a thunk, sending painful tremors through his spine to his chest. Ana-Honda brings up one fist, and the barbs on his knuckles are dripping with some kind of purple goop. Its smell is so bitterly pungent, Danny can taste it at the back of his throat.

“Is that—” Danny pauses to pant, still winded from having a car jammed straight through his diaphragm— “Hey, is that venom?”

Ana-Honda glances at the substance that’s now dropping from his knuckles to the linoleum in stinky little globs. “Yes, foolish teen.”

“...Dude, you realize anacondas aren’t venomous, right?”

“Oh.” Ana-Honda blinks, pulling back the thorny hand that was just centimeters away from grazing Danny’s face with mystery goo. He pulls off his knuckle dusters and tosses them over his shoulder. “Sorry about that.”

He grabs Danny around the throat. “No problem,” Danny grunts.

Danny goes in for a kick, and lands a solid one right in his opponent’s gut. But Ana-Honda gives only a short squawk, before rising to his feet, dragging Danny up with him.

This time, Danny tries a trick his mom showed him and Jazz when they were little. With as much force as Ana-Honda’s hands around his throat allows, Danny throws all his body weight into the heel of his hand and shoves it upwards, hitting the ghost’s nose with a  _ crack-crunch. _

Danny goes intangible. Ana-Honda staggers backwards with a hoarse cry, nose spilling ectoplasm. The Civic beeps worriedly, puttering over to its owner.

“You shouldn’t need me to tell you this, man,” Danny puffs, “but ghosts don’t need to breathe.”

(Half-ghosts tend to get a little bit panicky when their airway is cut off—while Danny can hold his breath for a killer long time, having it suddenly crushed out of him is just a whole other can of ecto-bites—but Ana-Honda doesn’t need to know that.)

The Thermos is still over by the cabbages. Danny dives for it, underestimates the distance and falls flat on his face. Okay. He can just. He alternates between crawling through the bargain-priced wreckage like a drugged panther and hovering barely off the ground á la a birthday balloon four days after the party’s over.

His hands close around the Thermos, and in a flash of light, Danny’s alone in the grocery store. He rolls onto his back.

_ “Ghostery _ store.” Danny huffs to himself. “I still think that’s funny.”

The world goes dark.

*

Here's how it ends: Danny awakens to a metallic rattling and the feeling of something bumping underneath him. He grumbles a little, turning onto his side, but only ends up wincing further awake when he presses his cheek to something cold and… grid-like?

“Go, go, go, go,” Tucker’s voice whisper-chants above him. “Sam,  _ hurry up, _ they’re gonna think we’re looters.”

“And what exactly are we looting? A body?” Sam hisses back.

Unbeknownst to them, Danny takes a deep breath, oddly relieved. If Sam and Tuck are still bickering, the world must be at least somewhere on the right axis. He opens his eyes slowly, feeling like Ana-Honda’s purple venom had glooped them shut. In his direct eyeline is Tucker, jogging along awkwardly. But when he refocuses his eyes…

“Why am I in a  _ shopping cart?” _

Sam yelps and Tuck squeals, the cart zigzagging dangerously. “Christ, Fenton, don’t  _ scare  _ us like that while we’re trying to dodge the cops!”

Danny sits up and grins, lopsided, at her, mostly due to the lightheadedness. “Sorry, Sam. Just glad to see you two are so willing to care for my broken and bruised body.” He glances around the back-alley they’re speeding through. “I mean, I’m living in the lap of luxury, here.”

She rolls her eyes. “Better than dragging you out by your armpits, isn’t it?”

“Are we gonna have to return this cart?” Tuck asks.

“You can be the one to scrub the ectoplasm out, if you want, Tuck.” The world’s starting to go grey around the edges again. The jolting of the cart is gonna make his brain drip out of his ears. “Okay, I’m gonna lie back down for a sec.”

Sam says, “We’re two blocks away from your house, can’t you just—?”

Simultaneously, Tuck says, “I mean, you probably shouldn’t be napping with a concussion—”

“Nope, too late. Already asleep.”

(He’ll regret it later when Tucker unintentionally pokes the broken rib to wake him up.)

Sam and Tucker bicker their way back to the Fentons’, and they certainly get some horrified looks for having an unmoving body jiggling along in a clearly stolen shopping cart, but that’s Amity Park.

For now, they let Danny sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @chickpeace


End file.
